There are no professional craps players. There are gambling addicts who risk and invariably lose large amounts of their own money or money they begged, borrowed or stole. But the myth of people making a living by playing casino craps is right up there with the myth of the Loch Ness monster. Why do you think casinos crack down so hard on card counters? The casinos would like you to believe that card counters are no better than cheaters but that's a lie. Card counting is simply advanced blackjack strategy that shifts the edge from the casino to the player. Anything that gives a net edge to the players, the casinos are against it. So put that into your conclusion of whether or not there are actually professional craps players.
I'll post it again - this is a GREAT thread. Here are some things a casino has that gamblers don't: 1. Rules of engagement that have a positive expectancy 2. Discipline to follow these rules 3. Bet size limits to keep from blowing up on that one big jackpot payout 4. Lots of shining lights, alcohol, and hot women to distract you from making rational decisions 5. An environment of "entertainment" rather than business, so the gambler gets something for the money they lose..... Hopefully the inference to retail traderz compared to professionals will be obvious.......
I don't know who you guys are, but unless you are the broker nobody has positive expectation expecting positive results is not the same as positive expectation I don't like to admit it, but I am required by law to tell you (in very fine print) past results are not indicative....yeah, yeah, yeah, you know how it goes I'm not a mathmatician, I don't even know how to compute x+y=z, but I know there is no such thing as positive expectancy or a win rate. If you are talking about betting on what it's done it will keep doing what kind of system is that? It's just common sense. What the heck else are you going to bet on? It will suddenly start doing something different at any moment? What kind of system is that? The only difference between the markets and craps is in the markets the numbers come up based on how much everybody bets on them.
So you don't think there is any set-up/price action that has a higher probability of going a certain way than another?
To the person who asked me how to "bucket" a list of historical (or backtested) trades to use the MonteCarlo spreadsheet ... here is the spreadsheet that I use ... input your trade list (P&L only, 1 line per trade) in the "Data" worksheet, then in the "Buckets" worksheet play with figures in the yellow-background cells to get buckets that you like. The columns "# trades" & "Avg/trade" define each bucket. The 3rd worksheet "Stats" computes a number of performance figures. Happy New Year!
like I said, the only way I know how to do it is bet what has happened will keep happening. Now how scientific is that? I'd hardly call it positive expectation. So far so good is a better description.
Possibly very scientific. If something has happened 700 times out of 1000, and is based on a sound strategy and not just data mining, then it is reasonable to expect a roughly 70% chance of it happening the next time. That is a positive expectation. That does not mean that this expectation should hold for the next 1000 trials, and that is why I carefully monitor my actual results. As this thread has shown, things change. Any strategy that has the potential for large gains, has the potential for large losses, even if that was not seen in the backtest. Don
last I checked, 50% of scientists think the universe will keep expanding and 50% think it will eventually start to contract back into another big bang. But you make a very good point. Getting back to Opie's original post, many said he didn't backtest long enough. But if everything is changing, maybe he backtested too long. If I backtest a 1000 years, I will predict that pretty soon people will start buying automobiles and telephones.